22/08/2012 - the worst airport experience of my life.

  Getting from Canada to the UK with my bicycle was an easy and simple process, Airtransat the airline were friendly and provided me with smiles and even a bag to put my bicycle in.
Thanks RyanAir you are a fucking nightmare, notice I didn't censor the swear word and I'll continue not to throughout this rant. I showed up at the airport a good 3 hours before my departure which I thought would be adequate time to repackage my things, get my boarding pass, put my bicycle in oversize luggage go through security and board the plane. As I have done this many times before I was confident all would be well.
Approaching the check-in desk with my bicycle automatically I could tell the woman was annoyed that she had to deal with someone with oversized luggage. With a young plain face, unenthusiastic and clearly unhappy she wore fake contact lenses making her eyes blue, why you would do this I wouldn't have a fucking clue - a simple smile is all that is needed. Anyway she told me that I had to print off my boarding pass between 15 days and 4 hours before the flight, this was written in the documentation of the confirmation sent to me when I booked the flight. The fine for not having this during check-in is an extortionate £60, and for what, not having a piece of paper where we try so hard to recycle, where every other airline I have flown with has no need for just a passport and where I can legitimately say that I work so hard planting these trees that at some point gets turned into this for-spoken paper. Fuck!
Having paid the £60 at the other end of the airport I rushed to repack all my belongings and wrap up my bicycle so that I have it easy for the luggage handlers to get it aboard the aircraft.
Dismantling the bike wasn't a problem, just a lengthy process, with an hour before my flight I had everything again at the check-in with the same emotionless fake-eyed bitch where she told me my bags were overweight and she was closing checkin in 5 minutes frustrated I moved some of my belongings from my backpack to inside the plastic bag where my bicycle was. The girl rushed me to the oversized baggage area where 2 Indian guys who just looked retarded looked at my bicycle and said "no, it won't fit" regarding to my bike an the extralarge conveyer-belt. I said what do I do now and these fuckers just said "I don't know". I took a gander and saw that it could obviously fit and climbed up on the system and gently guided it through with no hiccups.
Now, I had only 40 minutes to run to the gate and through security. I shoved through the line of people at security apologizing constantly and managed to get through promptly. Running from here to the gate was ridiculous as you had to run through all the duty free shops in a circle, sweating exhausted and hurting I made it to the gate just in time.
Boarding the plane obviously pissed off they sat me down we took off. Telling the terribly dressed stewards and stewardess' that I was dying of thirst having run around the whole airport they had the nerve to charge me £3 for a small bottle of water, I refused to pay and asked for tap water - obviously a no-go, so I drank the water from the tap in the toilet.
I'm writing this aboard the plane thinking nothing else can go wrong... I'll have to wait and see. Also, Fuck-you Ryanair!
Ok, so arriving in Rygge airport about 80 south of Oslo I got my bicycle and it all seemed fine.
I placed it and my other bags onto a trolley and made my way to an open space in the airport to reassemble it and sort out my things to have even weight distribution throughout my pannier bags.
I even took a timelapse of the process that didn't come out all that well, but if I find the time to put it all together I'll post it up here.
Thinking all was well and I could make my way towards Oslo this evening I was struck with some issues with my bike, first the pin in my rear tire valve had been broken off, the rear rack was all bent out of place and my dynamo generator was ruined. Thanks Ryanair!
I had to spend the night at the airport be size it was too late to look for a bike shop in the area but thankfully there was free wifi to find a bike shop close to Oslo near a train station.
I waited out the evening chatting to the girls a the information booth and updated my blog from earlier in the year.